Tyler Cowen, over at Marginal Revolution, quite rightly laments the death of British economic journalist, the aptly named Samuel Brittan.

Like Tyler, I first heard of Brittan’s Capitalism and the Permissive Society from the late Roy A. Childs, Jr. You might think that “Permissive” in the title is used negatively. No. One of the things Brittan liked about capitalism was that it is permissive. I’m going from memory here; my copy was destroyed in my 2007 office fire.

It was either in that book or in something else that Roy Childs told me from another Samuel Brittan writing that Brittan told the story about how Milton Friedman, with one view on one issue, got him respecting free market views more: it was that Friedman was such an outspoken advocate of a free market in military labor–that is, Friedman opposed the draft.

Here’s another Brittan/Friedman story, from Wikipedia, that I hadn’t known:

[Friedman] mentioned to me a letter he had received from Arthur Burns saying that Eisenhower was turning out well as President. I expressed surprise, to which Friedman responded: “First, Burns has much better knowledge of Eisenhower. Second, given equal knowledge I would prefer his opinion to yours.” Against The Flow (2005)